¶ 12:59 (Radek Sali)
Welcome to the mentor. I'm Marke Boris.
Really I came to realize exactly as you say, for that last couple of years, I was not the right CEO to take it forward. I was the right CEO to close out the transaction, but I was on a plane three to three weeks of every month and it was great, but I'd lost that connection. You know, I had a thousand employees and I didn't know everyone's name, I didn't know all their stories. I focused on my team that I was directly responsible for, and I got
joy out of that. But it was certainly unsustainable and there are different people that should run that bigger size a business. And I was very happy to pass on the business and don't have any regrets about not being in it anymore.
Can you tell me through the story of how you got involved. This was when it was valued at say, fifteen million dollars. Just you know, what were the circumstances by would you be came involved in Swiss?
Yeah, I kind of. I told you my backstory and my father and so dad always had this kind of and my mum's a medical scientist too, so she reads people's blood and tells basically gave analytics to my father on the nutrition that people had in their blood, and that would help Dad prescribe various supplements, nutrition, meditation programs, the whole thing to get the individual as healthy as they possibly could be to deal with Western medic since
treatment program And so Dad had this whole league of people that would follow him or be meant he'd mentor or support, and a lot of those were entrepreneurs in the industry, and one in particular was Michael Saba, who I just saw today, which is amazing. On the flight down. I hadn't seen him for years, and in typical Michael mode, He's a shareholder of Pana Chocolate and gave me some pan of chocolate and he was handing it out to
every hasty that he could see. And he's got his Sabor Organic cleaning and fragrance range and he had that as well, and he was handing out to everyone at Easy Ultimate salesperson. So I learned a lot from Michael, and Michael was running the Swiss business when I got to know Michael, and that was through my father. He
was getting mentoring from my dad. His mum was unwell and she wanted to get off HRT because she was getting very side effects from the medication, and Dad recommended a whole program to help her do that naturally, and she had wonderful results. And forever they became friends, and Dad would help him with his supplement formulations and give advice on what he thought were the right dosages in exchange for knowing that he could recommend his patients the
best possible product that would have the best result. And you know, hence WI Swiss was a great product. Dad did that out of the goodness of his heart. He's an academic. He just loves doing what he did. And so yeah, we struck up a friendship. And I was
at Village road Show. I'd kind of worked my way up from the candy bar through various operational roles internationally, locally treated my role as you know, I'm getting paid to to learn about the basics of business while my other mates are at university, which I was at university as well. I had to pay for that. So we may as we get paid to learn about the basics of business and do this job properly part time and
work my way up through the ranks of that. And so yeah, that just the timing was Michael was always at me. You got to come and work with me. It took a couple of years and we got to know each other, and then you know, I saw there was no future for me a village as a CEO and the next sort of five years, so it was time for me to look elsewhere. And health, because of my father being a professor lectured to me all the time, came to me very naturally, and I stepped across to
a business that required process and structure to grow. So that was the beginning of my journey.
And just helped me out it. Why was it called Swiss.
Swiss Swiss with an AD and so it was basically because we couldn't patent the word Swiss.
The why Swiss at.
All because there's a connotation of quality that comes with that, and you have to be a premium which set us apart from the others. We always had a premium price put of around twenty percent higher than the average cost in the category. But that meant we had to have premium ingredients to deliver a better outcome, and so we had the highest retention in the category of over seventy percent, and so when people tried our product come back for it.
So the next step was to market. As you know, well, if you've got a great product, you just got to tell people about it, and we got on the front foot about that.
So just I mean, I've always been intrigued about vitamin businesses. Or it wasn't quite a suplement, there's more of vitamin business with it. Yeah.
So it was vitamin's minerals and hoops.
Yeah, supplement and and of course I were for sailing. A lot of the chemists been placed like love La pharmacies, you could buy them. Did you make did Swiss make the vitamins here in Australia and did they source from it? Was there any play in terms of where you source your ingredients from.
Yeah, so we made them here and and we'd sourced just from the best possible places that we could source ingredients. So for instance, vitamin B and vitamin C, you can only source that from China. They've got a monopoly over the market. It's a dirty product to make, so not many people like making those ingredients. Whereas you know, your your herbs generally come from India and then processed.
In Italy as in gin sing.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, all your traditional aravatic herbs, and then you know us is Cranberry. You know, there's sort of places that they come from around the world, and then you make the product locally and you know, and then there's plenty of good manufacturers here. But we had to make it in Switzerland, for instance, when we launched in Switzerland, because we couldn't be called Swiss without being
made in Switzerland, so because it was deceptive. So and same in Russia as well, So we launched in those places.
Manufacturing your global business.
Yeah, we did the biggest licensing deal that an Australian company had done with Procter and Gamble and TeV they had a health partnership and then we're also the biggest natural health brand in China by the time we'd sold, So the business was a beast. It was trailing to me in a billion in sales, I should say. So it was just just, yeah, a great business to be involved with.
As I call it. It was a white plastic with a red top top on top of is that right? And a fairly it wasn't an overly it was an overly highly decorated sort of what do you call it, like labeling on it either.
Yeah, yeah, it was as basic as it could be. You know that the tub was the cheapest tub you could buy. We put everything we could into the ingredient. We enhanced the tub as we went down the path, and the labeling was very scientific and looked to just pop off the shelves.
Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And as I there's a few Aussie brands sort of around at the time, but not probably not as well to me, not as well known as Swiss, but one of the things I know as best Swiss. It was pretty good at marketing. I mean, you were pretty good at getting people to be your ambassadors. So you had a recording Nicole Kidman as one of your ambassadors in her early days. I mean this is late what period were talking about it.
I came on in twenty would have been twenty eleven, right, so, and then Ricky was our first ambassador, Ricky Ponting and he would have been two thousand and seven. Yeah, two years into my time.
And how do you go about finding those sorts of people like I mean, were they probably not as famous then as are now, or maybe Ricky would have been in his prime.
Yeah, he was captain Australian career team and Nicole was she was struggling a little bit in Australia, but her credentials in the US, she's like royalty there, she's like Lady die Is.
To us, she's you pick her.
But yeah, I think it was for that and also we want to open up the Asian market, and she was Jimmy chou Chanelle's face. Yeah, so big news Amiga as well. So everywhere you'd go, you'd see a poster and I just saw a big gap, you know when you talk about supplements back in the day. And I'd go to a party and I worked for Village Road Show and I talk about the new movies we have and want to talk to me and ask me questions about the next premiere, and so the old center of
the attention. And then I'd get to these parties and start at Swiss and I'd start, you know, where do you work? And the barbecue conversation. As it goes, they sort of respond Swiss, and they go, is that the embassy? And I go, Brand's in trouble here? And then I'd say vitamins and then they would want to change the subject because I'd walk into two pharmacies and you know it would be ibs that the marketing would be about
it'll be bound syndrome or you and retract infection. You know, I'm going to really want to talk about that at a barbecue. So it was all very science based or too hippie based as well. And and I'd look over to the perfume or the cosmetic sign as well, lit up these beautiful faces projecting health and so forth. But that's from the outside and beauty from the inside is most important. So which turned it into a lifestyle brand, and that lifestyle brand gave us permission to work, you know,
with personalities like Ricky first. And Ricky we started with because we were a supplier of the Australian cricket.
Team into the supplements.
Yeah, so we would give them supplements each year, and the dietician there was a big fan of what we're doing. And so I knew Ricky was taking the product and I could do a deal with the cricket team for probably probably a third more of the price, or I could go straight to Ricky and probably being more flexible with what we could do. And I knew he was taking the product, so it was just simply a call to his manager and so hey, you're not in this category,
and not many sports people are. In fact, the only one was Rob de Costello for Centrum, and that'd be the occasional person at those parties that would say, yeah, I'd take Centrum and as Rob de Costello and I'd walk into pharmacists and say, wow, you've got so my space for Centrum. You know it must get best margin. They get no, no, no, it's the advertising on fifty two weeks of the year. And they got Rob de Castella there with a product in his hand and they were
taking less margin. But it was all about the ease of selling it. And I went, oh, hang on, what about our product? They go, well, it sells itself, we don't have to sell it. And I was like, well, what if we gave them the tools to sell it and dial it up? And that started with Ricky and then it carried on with probably three hundred different ambassadors.
Really yeah, yeah, of all different ages, personalities, sexes, the whole lot and event based stuff that we would capture people's attention and get them consider taking our product.
Because today we drop about influencers and by the way, it's no different what's always happened to those people when you just meet and influencers and they just happen on a different medium, which in those days would have been television, newspaper, radio or whatever. And posters. I guess you when you pick an individual, do you pick it for the brand values?
I mean, like, so you know these days, obviously influencers are just a very transactional thing and you want to get just to put some influence out on the local, especially micro influencers on their particular Instagram page or whatever happens to be. But then did you pick your ambassadors to take pointing? Did you set out your own the Swiss values and the Ricky sits on suits all as particular values that we stand for.
Yeah, our secret weapon was our culture, and our culture was very values driven. Would make decisions by calling out our values and they weren't just written on the wall, and that would extend to our ambassadors the way it presented ourselves to our customers, suppliers, everyone that was connected in our world. They would have a strong sense of that we were a values driven business. And so you kind of like a track like as a result of
presenting that. And yeah, so you're dead right. The influencer part you know with sa Nicole Kidman in the and you know, we failed in the US with launching with her, which was the primary reason why we went with her and Alan DeGeneres at the time. But we knew that doing this amount of advertising was going to work somewhere, and it worked in Australia to a Chinese audience, and we had one hundred and thirty thousand resellers of our product.
So talk about influencers. This was kind of in those days where it's just starting out as kind of buying online, and China took off with this kind of B to B sales mechanism where you know, the Alley Barbers of this world, the ten Cents of this world all had consumer offerings that were more advanced or probably up to where we can now see in Australia where you know, all of a sudden, they'd see this Hollywood start And it wasn't the actual people in China that were trying
because of her, it was the influencers that knew Nicole Kimmen went we're going to try this product. They tried it and they went, oh, this is great. They started talking about how great the product was with authenticity, and then it just took off like wildfire.
Then my point was I'm thinking about it, and don't
¶ 25:15 (Eight Sleep)
leave it to my age to start thinking about it. Think about it now. And if you're insteaventy six eight, you're forty eight, You've got another twenty on top of that. Perhaps, But these things are given to us by somebody as a gift. You've got to make sure you optimize every single one of them and enjoy every single one of them. And part of that is having a good strategy like sleep.
Sleep is part of the strategy for me, and I haven't really up until more recently been thinking about and trying to understand eight hours, seven hours, six hours interrupted sleep, not interrupted sleep, write temperatures, and I think most astroylians don't think that way. I think they know they should have seven or eight hours, but they don't know about deep sleep, ram sleep, temperature controls. And okay, let's get into measurement, because if I've got to manage my sleep,
I can't manage what I can't measure. Owing can in business, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So if the business is right now, and I've got businesses, but if the business of mark Boris is to live longer and better or optimize. Then I've got to measure it before I can manage it. And this is a great this is a really important I can go to gym, measure what weight lift's going to do my body weight? Can I jump this high? And also stuff that stuff's easy.
But sleep is a bit is a bit mysterious. Is that sort of where you guys are at taking the mystery out by putting numbers around it.
We're thinking too their mansions.
On one side, we want to measure everything, but very soon you will get to a point of so what right, So okay, this is my percentage of deep sleep, this is my percentage of RAM and this is main sleep quality.
It's not good and so what?
And so the big difference between us and all the wearables is that then we take action for you and we do things to improve sleep for you. And that is the big difference. And that is also why we don't see wearables as competitors for us. They are the best thing that could be out there because they are cheaper and they educate customers and then people start thinking, oh wow, my sleep is not good. Now, how do I improve it, and that is when a sleep comes in.
And that's a really good point because someone I'm off a measurement, I'm off wearing wearables and or rings, et cetera. And I get it. And some people are obsessed by that stuff. But for me, one of the things I said to somebody more recently, well, I know, if I've had a bad sleep, I don't know a mean to tell me or something else to tell me that I had a shitty sleep last night, or I wake up three times and you know, and I wake up feeling
pretty crap. What I think, what you're saying is that you're doing something about it.
Correct, And that is the whole number one principle I et sleep is the data is just the first step. But what a sleep does is we seamlessly improve.
Sleep for you. We do the job for you. Is actually one of our values. We do the job for you. Yeah.
So, like it's interesting, you said, so what relations to the data? Maybe that's the problem you're solving. You're solving the So what correct?
For me?
It was a problem. So what I know I didn't sleep very.
Yeah, I can track all the sleep, but if my sleep is crap, so what Yeah? And so actually we have what we call a wall of love, so it is a link to a web page whereas there is plenty of people wearing Anora or a Whoop or other wearables, so you're important to have which is important you have? And they past the screenshot of their Aura Whoop and Apple data before and after using our product, and that is the best marketing ever because they had the score
of let's say sixty. Then they start using a sleep and the score goes to eighty. Or they travel and they measure their sleep when they're traveling, when they're back home, and when they travel without the pod they get fifty five and with the pod they go back to eighty. And this is not our tracking, it's a third party device tracking. But is the best of that tasting ever because it's not a sleep telling you that we improve your sleep? Is your a waarable telling you that you're improving.
Someone like me, I travel a lot. Is there a period it going to be period of time in terms of your plans where you can see yourself, say doing a deal with I know one of the big hotel groups high to say American one for whatever it is, and where I can go and get they say, Mark, if you come and stay at our hotel for an extra fifty bucks a night or whatever it is, you can use the aid sleep product on our beds, on their beds.
Yeah, that thing.
Yeah, I mean it should be right, and I think it should be these hotel groups that are thinking about it, because you basically pete to go sleep somewhere else. So it is the most important thing.
And that's when I sleep the worst. Yeah, when I'm in a hotel room because it's got a conditioning. Generally speaking, i walk in the room, I've either got turned there because I hate the condition going at night. If it's freezing gold outside, it's too hot and dry inside. If it's boiling height outside freezing holding on the inside like both which I don't don't enjoy. And and it's sort of like a one size fits also in other words,
every room it's got the same temperature. And having an eight sleep mattress, what do you call it?
Pod?
Is that we call it a pod an a sleep pod, which is basically just a mattress covered with you some tech around it, not basically, but that's what it is that I don't don't people get confused, but that can actually maintain what I wanted to do, and I could just turn all the other ship off. And if I knew there was a hotel group that did this specifically in Australia, for example, when not travel interstate every month every week, I would use those hotels.
I'll tell you two things you were like. The biggest aha moment for our customers is the first time they travel, because they get so used to it as I'm thinking, Yeah, the first time they travel is when they've write us, They've wrote to customer Support and say I didn't realize how great they sleepy is until when they travel. The most requested feature is the travel pod because they struggle when they travel.
Is there a travel pod?
It is not yet?
Can you organize?
Yeah?
Like me, I would send it in advance. What would be good is if I could buy another one and I could say, listen, I always stay at this hotel in Melbourne. Send it there and they can store for me. Mister Boris is coming. I'm happy to pay for it, put it on his bed.
But why not.
Yeah it sounds small, bright, but at the end of the day, like it's good for business.
Yeah, if you are going there for business and we can give you twenty percent more sharpness, no mental sharpness.
You need it.
So I have athletes that do that, so yeah, yeah, drivers, we.
Have a team. For some of them, we go and we install it in all the races. For some of our tennis players for the Grand Slam, we install them the pod with tailor freeze. For the Olympics, we sent one of our guy to install the pods so Taylor could sleep on the party.
Actually had a custom sized pot because the beds in the village were not a size that we make, and so our team made a custom site spot for him and a few other athletes and they took it into the Olympic village and used it and then you know, they win medals and that's amazing.
Well maybe it's funny, you know, because I was just thinking media, thinking how do you develop your business? But I was seeing in Australia there's a mob called Coola Mattresses is like the mates of mine sort of set up and they've sold this now private eqred own it, but it doesn't matter. But they're really good because like you ream up and you know, email them or go online you can get the stuff delivered to you. Really quickly. It's in a really easy box, not like a big
mattress or a delivered you. When you take about the box, it sort of expands, it becomes a mattress and they're pretty good price. But if you teamed up with someone like that, you know, I go buy a Cola mattress and I want to put it in my farm. We're talking about Byron Bay earlier on before we're recording, and I have a farm up there, like a little resort there, and and I got all Coola mattresses every every room,
like fifteen rooms whatever we got there. And you know, if I was given an option to put a sleep on there, I would and say to a guess, you're going to go to the best sleep of your life. When you wake up in the morning, you're going to feel refreshed, and you're going to enjoy the Barren Bay weather and stand on the grass and you know, get some minerals India system and you're going to come back from your Barn Bay break like like Godzilla. You can
take on the world. I mean I would do that. Yeah, maybe partnership with some of these mattress providers here in Australia, because I reckon. That's fantastic. I mean, like and people, I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm sure you know. Why is it we take for granted our sleep? Why is that?
Because I think there is this legacy of what you were saying, right, you and I we grew up with in this environment where sleeping or sleeping too much was weak. Well, instead sleeping very little was strung was mcha. Well instead this is completely different now, right when we go out with our team, they don't drink at dinner, No one orders a cockail.
We don't.
We don't drink either, right.
So now it is yeah, although I own a whiskey business, which is Beig Christy.
And so now there is this completely and opposite thing where if you're the CEO of a public company you say that you sleep only four hours a night, it looks like you're s CEO is not taking care of himself and might die every any day.
Well, the insurance policy just went up on you, exactly right.
Well, instead, if you say, look, I don't drink because it's CEO, and the imagine you're the SEO of a public company, I don't drink. I go to the gym and take care of myself and sleep eight hours every single day. Then you look like, Okay, this guy is sfe yeah every thing. He's the right person, he's in the right mindset.
It's a business athlete, right. I think it's so common for athletes that are practicing a sport to talk about these things, and they're probably the first ones that started talking about it years ago and how they invested in all the products that they use and their routines and sleep. But we don't realize that each one of us is an everyday athlete. Obviously for people running business, it's very clear now and there's a lot of conversation about it.
But every single person out there, you're an athlete, and you get one body and you get one life, and so why not treat it like you are an athlete and taking care of it the same way.
So that sort of a little bit away from just being a longevity discussion. It's more about today in a transactional sense. Today you're going to perform a certain way.
And Jeff Bezos talks about that, and he there was an interview where he says, look, I sleep eight hours every single night because my job is to take the two three ride decision every single day, and so I need to be a peak mental performance and sleep is foundational to that.
So in other words, we have business athletes as well as someone who wants to live a long time or optimize that period. While so I am leaving in terms of being able to do as many things.
Suppose your favorite athlete who was living every night four hours per night, you wouldn't think the NESCo. Any executive at a company is a business athlete. They just use their mind to express their performance.
So sleep fitness then is sort part of a mantra.
Yeah, it's all of our sleep performance. We improve your sleep performance, so then you can use that performance to achieve whatever you want to achieve in your personal and professional life.
Well, I'm totally sold, and I'll bet I've got one anyway, But I'm totally sold, and I look forward to sort of giving you a bit of feedback on this stuff because I have been one of those people who have I understand more recently how important sleep is, but I've been one of those people have taken sleep for granted and therefore, and there's now time for me to be a bit more responsible relative to myself and also all my family and everybody else who relies upon me, my staff,
my shaholders everything else, and to some extent, I want to sort of share with my audience too, because I feel an obligation to share with my audience, because I don't think Australians yet are as on board with importance of high quality sleep, perhaps as your audience has been in the part is currently and part of my game is to bring interesting people on, like yourselves, who have
got a product that's there to solve a problem. The problem gets solved, and my game is to play back out and to the audience and tell them what this is, what they should be doing, what they could be doing. I white say what they should do, what they could do.
¶ 30:44 (Lia Georgantis)
I don't want to be like every other fashion boutique. I don't like our social media. It's not authentic. It's size six girls, it's curated, it's pretty.
That's not who we are. That's not how I am.
I'm outspoken, I'm loud, I'm pretty rogue, and I want that to translate on our social media. But it took us like six months to kind of find our place because you have to be careful in fashion. Everything is beautiful, curated, driven by ego, and then I wanted to come out and just be like rogue and loud and you know, it's instagrammable, but instagrammable and catch people's attention in the right way. I don't want people adding us for doing things that are not in line with how they want
to see fashion. So we were trying all different things, and then one day my friend who was working in the business, so during COVID, we were coming to work every day from nine to five, even in lockdown, so that we could sell clothes, like go on the internet and sell clothes. She came up to me and she said, I want to do this thing where we both wear the exact same thing. You're a size twelve, I'm a size six, and I want to.
Talk about it on camera.
And I was like, I'll do it tomorrow, and she was like, hey, tomorrow, we're doing it. So the next day I got in, She's like, we're doing it today. I've got the outfits. So we did this video and then we started doing these videos every single day. And so we do a video, so we wear this outfit and I wear it and she wears the exact same
out or like these clothes like a Blaser. But during that time, we'd wear maybe like a tracksuit set, and it'd be the exact same outfit, style, the exact same right, and showing how two different bodies can wear the same outfit and look really good together.
And we'd say, hi, everyone, welcome to the same same but different size.
Today we're showing you the Camilla Remark jumper, the Camilla Remark tracksuit. I'm in a size twelve pants, I'm in a size twelve jumper. I'm going to do Bondai de Bonnie with my friends, and I'm going to stop at ex cafe and buy a donut, and then I'm going to go here and do this, and then there might be another video and it's hey.
Everyone, welcome to them some a different size. Today. I'm out of Lockdown.
I'm at Mateo, I've ordered Tommy's margarita, I'm wearing my Rebecca Lance dress, and I'm in order a prestrudo pizza. And we were getting people excited for like life and the life that was to come, because eventually we were going to be out of lockdown. So we're making these videos every day, but also we were going pretty st crazy, like it's the middle of Lockdown. So we're being funny and lighthearted and we're telling people about our day on the internet.
Did you work out that that's what people wanted to hear?
Yes, because instantly we were getting messages, I'm at home, I'm having the worst time. My mum's in hospital, I can't see her, and you've brightened my day. The next day we're receiving like cakes, boards of fruit. They're calling our local cafe and ordering our coffee and paying for it for us. Like we could tell straight away that we were making women amzing.
Yeah.
Absolutely, yes. And then we were going live. So every Thursday, Hey everyone, on Thursday, we're going to go live at twelve o'clock and we are going to play a game. And all these people would come live and like play this game. We were in the shop and we'd have to like pick an outfit. Ella would say, oh, I'm going to be going on a date to Icebergs. When we get ou've lockdown, I have to quickly find her like cool outfit and style her in it.
And catching on.
Really a lot up and during that time, Yeah, so that was that was catching on.
And then when we reopened in October in twenty twenty two twenty one.
In twenty twenty one, we.
Reopened, We renovated our store, we reopened with a new brand mix, and we reopened with this new social strategy and people were literally flocking in to come and meet the girls behind the.
Same same but different size, the same same but different size. That was a handle yep on Instagram and everywhere else.
We just kept talking about it, and it would be like over the top of our.
Videos that we would po hashtag same same yeah yeah exactly to chalk Instagram.
So you did TikTok and it was going anywhere else.
No TikTok and Instagram.
You didn't worry about Facebook and stuff like that. No, no, no, okay, And how did you work out who the protocols so the platforms usually go on to based on did you do any research around the audiences your audiences or did that just just let it grow naturally.
We let it grow naturally.
And so you saw the audience growing and you thought, well that they are TikTok audiences and their Instagram audiences, and that you did what did you do in terms of analytics? It was your husband involved with this stage analytics, so.
He was doing all of our ads.
At the time, we didn't have anyone doing ads, and he went and launched it from one of his friends and he was pushing all the ads out of the same same with different size and they were going crazy.
So we knew it was working.
Yeah, so and so, how much of this was about, you know, being Lea and a friend being their authentic selves? Like what was what was it that was working?
It was being our authentic selves. Honestly, that's what it was.
Because when so she eventually left, say eight months after we reopened, she left to go overseas for an extended period of time. And when she resigned, I was like, we have to close the shop because I can't do that with anyone else.
She's the only person I can do that with. I can't do this without her.
It ended up that the girl that was filming us for the last eight months, because then it ended up that someone was filming us instead of us filming ourselves, she was She had listened to us for eight months every day, so she just jumped into that position someone else is filming and it just worked.
So it was fine.
But I think it's about being authentic, like seriously authentic. People know when you're being authentic.
And when you're trying to be all that well, they don't like poopo full of shit, so.
They can just tell you. You can see it, you can feel it.
¶ 40:37 (Nick Palumbo)
Nick and his team at Messina actually did disrupt at least here in Australia. I don't know anything about anywhere else soces, but at Lisia in Australia, what was considered to be the cutting edge of what ice cream should offer us. Prior to this, you could get your standard ice creams, you could get an ice cream shop if you get a fresh scoop and all that sort of stuff, and you've got the you know, the visual thing you had a bit excited about looking at all the colors
and all les sort of stuff. But what Nikinis to have done, the actual machine has actually become extraordinarily creative. In fact, you just have a little lab next door to your machine. Your main machine is sawed down here in Victoria Street. When did you discover or was this just a little foible of your own that innovation was going to be really cool and important.
It came from having so many ideas in my head of all the different types of flavors. Because inspiration comes from everywhere I go and eat in a fine dining restaurant, the dessert would come out and I would, you know, break down the elements of that dessert and think, how can I turn that into an ice cream into a gelato? So deconstruct basically how how I could you know it
can be as the inspiration comes from every anywhere. You know, we've made flavors with look of Mather's, We've made flavors, you know.
One of my favorite.
It just comes from from it from everywhere, and that back then you've only got X amount of flavors on that you can display at any one time.
And so.
How how do we.
I'm capable of more than this, more than twenty flavors or thirty flavors, so you know, what do we do? And so that's come again coming from the restaurant background, we came up with the idea, well what do we do with a specialist menu where we constantly change? And the funny thing about that is that it coincided with kind of like the beginning of social media, right with all the Facebook and all that, thank God, And it was the perfect thing for social media hundreds right, it
was perfect. It was it was like social media was made for that style of operation. Like I see a lot of my mates in the restaurant business, right and they post stuff and everything, and and you know they're always looking for shit to post to stay relevant. And it's just so hard, you know, when you're a restaurant because how many dishes can you change on a daily
You can't, you know. So so for us it was this perfect thing where where every day we could come up with something new and we had something to talk.
So is that the rhythm though every day? So do you do that like personally now? Yeah?
Back no, Well, back then one of my business partners who another chef who he joined, he joined the team. He joined me and my brother Danny. We basically started, you know, he started posting on Facebook and stuff like that. And then we had another made of mind that we were sharing an office in Techlan who you know, he was x DJ, and like he was listening to us post stuffing us that you guys are doing all wrong.
So he started doing it and then we thought, fuck it, you're doing a great job, man, why do you become a partner resource And now he's a partner, and so that's how the business has grown and we've just grown it this way. But like I said, social media for our brand was absolutely perfect. You know, it still drove the innovations it became. It was like a feedback loop, right, so you see that, you get a good response, so
you keep doing it again. Right here we are ten, twelve, fifteen years later, still still doing it and we don't know any other way now. And the funny thing about that is that now we get kind of accused as being not a traditional gelato joint. We're an ice cream place, you know, which is absurd because if you want the huge thirty five traditional flavors, we still have them. It just just people gravitate to the specials, the five specials that we do every week, right, so.
Excus you competitors and stuff.
But the funny thing about that, yeah, I honestly couldn't give rats. But the funny thing about that is that you see all these guys start up, right and they're doing good products. You can't fault the product with the traditional hat on because they've gone to Bologna, they've learned how to make it. Now they've come and done their business the experts.
That's great, but.
Slowly, slowly slowly, slowly, you just see it creeping in that they starting to do more Australian stufle flavors more, you know, the non traditional Italian flavors are starting to come through because that's what the market wants.
So why why would you fight it?
You know, what's your most popular I mean, would you say you've got the most popular thing flavor?
Yeah? It used to be used to be salted caramel, yep, and now now it's pistachio, prelling is your most popular most it's we can't.
I don't get it.
I just don't get it because pistachio traditionally has never really been a flavor that used to sell.
But I don't know what is.
I don't even I don't know what's gone on in the last three four years. But the world's just gone pistachio mad like and so yeah, it's a number one seller and buy a lot.
So do you you must manufact for it or somewhere else? Do you know you're not down here?
Right? No?
No, So we've got our central factory in Marrickville, right, and we basically make everything in there. We don't buy anything in so everything is made there. So we've got our own haze nut farm in Seymour. We've got our own dairy farm. We grow on haze nuts. So we get our first commercial crop this year. We've got a little bit last year, but this year we'll get our first commercial crop. It won't be enough for the whole
year for our needs, but it's a start. Hopefully within about two years will be self sufficient with haze nuts, so we don't have to import the hazelnuts from Italy. And it's an Italian variety so it's similar quality. And we've got our own dairy farm in America just twenty minutes out of shap Sheping I'm been talking about. And again just Jersey cows. You know, we've got about what to three hundred milking at any one time.
Milk yeah, yeah, for your own needs, your own supply for and supply.
Yeah.
We don't sell it to anyone else.
What do you bring it up here? Cut it up here?
Yeah, So we pasteuralize it on the farm and then we stick it in pelicans and every twice a week it comes up pastalizing.
Being warm in the milk, up a bit of bacterias and you bring it up. Then you put it in a big tanker. You bring it up here and then you you turn it in the formula so and where. So I always saw it just down the radio. I thought that was your experimentation place. I thought these dudes were sitting in there and were like with hats and sort of you know, coming up with a whole lot of ideas. Chef hats to think, other ideas what to do.
It's actually happening in miracle something. So when you first started, some of the mistakes, what are some in terms of business mistakes or flavor business stakes. Flavor is far and away the biggest mistake I made was, you know, we we just the brand started off being built with a.
You know, we wanted to do multiple sites.
We thought, yeah we could do you know, we could do fifty of these in Australia and discovered really quickly. Yeah, I discovered really quickly. The people that I did it with were lovely people, but they were more financial people. They were investors. And it was for me being an Italian background. And I mean I'm generalizing here, but Italians
should stay away from multiple side operators. We're too emotionally attached to our businesses, you know, and you need to be it need to be a level of not ruthlessness, but a level of you need to be able to be content with, say, you need to be more consistent rather than worrying about the most amazing quality if you want to franchise, you know, and that's just not I'm not built that way. So it was a massive mistake opening up all those stores so quickly.
So when did you happen?
We happened that got to seven, I think six or seven, and it just was just a disaster. So they were down and just as this one was about to shut down, I thought, no, I did a deal with my partners and basically I said, you know what, you guys can have everything and I'll just take this on my own and basically just started there again, just just concentrating. There
was never going to be no visions of grandeur. I just wanted one shop and it had to be the best JEO you could possibly make, and slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, we just grew. We just grew organically. They're not franchised, they are all company owned.
Soores so your.
Stores in terms of distributing your product, At one stage you thought about it, you and your investors sort of better being up fifty soores you got to seven didn't work out? How do you just so in terms of distributing your product, now you have company owned stores, Yeah, but how else did you distribute like you distribute through wars or any.
Of those environments.
Stepped away from all of that, where do you go then? How do you just always gonna have it? It's just our store? So where else you are apart from Darlinghurst now.
Darling Oh in Sydney, We're in Bondi, Surrey Hills.
We're in.
Brian Lea Sands, We're in where are we?
How do you push the areas?
I really wish I could say there was a scientific formula. It really is out of base.
No, not at all.
It's just we just think, is it a cool area?
Do we like it?
What's happening around us? It's if I was to present Messina as a business plan and picture to everyone, you'd raise five bucks, Like, seriously, how do you deal with that?
¶ 50:01 (Jenny Child)
I think for me, it was just another meeting in my day at the time, it was just another meeting in my day where I wanted to be able to be useful in you know, bouncing off ideas and really understanding the situation. I did.
I did at one point in the meeting.
It was probably early on think what you just said earlier, which was, why the hell did you buy this? I did, and I asked him. I just sort of like leaned over the table and I was like, Will, why did you buy this asset? Like?
What is it? What'd you say?
I'm don know.
He leaned back a little bit in his chair and said, yeah, I don't know, literally said I don't know.
And I thought, okay, that's a curious response. O could let's talk more about it.
We sort of dug into and of course, you know, he bought it for really sound reasons, which then resonated with me as well. But yeah, the interaction was one that I think left me really curious about who he was and why he had this asset.
I knew he didn't know retail and he wasn't an operator.
He was an investor, And so that led to a bunch of conversations about the potential of this brand that had kind of been this latent asset that you look at it and you're like, there's gold there. There's such love and goodwill in this brand, and if we can reignite that it's got a whole future head there.
It's funny because I was when you were saying that,
when you said latent brand. The same sort of happened for Aaron Williams, the bootmakers and Apparel and Drives the Bone, and those sorts of brands which have sort of been more recently rescued more recently over the last few years, have been rescued by people like Will, wealthy individuals, and they've actually all doing very well now and apart from the other brands you mentioned, which are the more of the fashioned brands, like you said Camilla remark, but like
those sorts of Australian brands that are well and they're doing well overseas. But those iconic brands you're talking about Lake in Oreton, they did get rescued by a number of people, and I think about it, and most of them are doing pretty well because they just need to be put some life back into them, which is I
find quite interesting. And that no one else really recognized them, one of which the people didn't recognize as me, I'm pretty pissed off of myself they didn't actually think about this, But good on Will for doing that. A lot of people would be listening this Jenny, and they'd be saying to themselves that what they say to them is because
these people tell me this stuff. They say, Oh my god, I've I've got my business I'm running, or I've got my profession I'm doing and I and I go to seminars and I, you know, upskill PD days, Professional development days. I go to industry events to see who's winning awards and stuff like that. And every now and then someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn or something of that and says, oh, I like what you're saying we're doing. Could we have a meeting, just a coffee catch up?
And they say, And loads of people say to themselves say to me, I don't know whether I'm wasting my time or not because I've got so much, so many other things to do with my job, my job. Could I could be working seven days a week, twenty hours a day and still not get everything completely, which I'd imagine would be the case for someone working McKinsey's.
But then again, had no time.
They say, I've got no time, Craig. So do I say when someone like Will reaches out to me, I mean, how do I work out the priority list of who I should attend or where I should attend to or is this a bit of a luck game.
I don't think there's a recipe to it.
I think for me, having something clear that you're dedicated to, that's your personal strategy related to your career clearly important. I think there's a lot of people that I mentor and coach and see, especially young women who don't have that, and so all my work with them is what is that three year goal?
What is that five year goal? How do you really shape something that you're moving towards.
But if you're not open and opportunistic then about opportunities that you could never foresee, then what are you doing?
Like that's not a way to live life.
And so opening yourself to people you find interesting or have something curious that could contribute to how good you are as a leader or a human being, I mean, that's what life's about.
So I think it's so important to stay open to that.
Okay, before I get back, well, but just put a question to you. So I got a deadline deadliness at the end of February, I'm as a team and two thirds of the way through getting the deadline work completely. We'll probably make it, but like it's intense. I'm the leader, let's say it to you. You're the leader of the team. You might be the propriety of the business as well. It could be deadline relation of the business. Then four or five people reach out to you. Which ones just have a coffee?
Catch up?
Do you?
How do you prioritize?
What do you do?
I definitely think there's a periods of time you'd have the same thing, or your head's down, You're like, this is a period of time where I just external influences, like I have to say.
Really focused.
Typically for me, those are pretty short periods of time when I'm then in the prioritization mode. I mean, there's obviously links to the core nature of the business and things that could enhance what we're doing that make the list.
What about you personally?
Though?
Personally?
How it's going to help me personally? I don't mean, what can I learn from this individual? Is that important?
Absolutely? I have that filter on all the time. I Mean I was like, what can I learn from Mark?
How will this experience shape me and make me a better person and a better leader? And all of those things right, Partly just being nervous. As we talked about at the beginning, it's like, Okay, well, I'm probably going to learn something about myself that I'm either good at or need to work on, or something from Mark. And listened now to a ton of your podcast and I've picked up lots of things that otherwise I wouldn't have. So I think the curiosity of what you can learn from experiences and.
People is tough on my list.
Curiosity. I love it absolutely because that drives me when I have do this podcasts. And it does because I'm sitting here talking to someone. I look, I don't even read the brief for it. You're coming to be honest with the team sets it all up. I quickly quickly McKinsey, will Vicka's name, then Oreton, I thought of the Lame Boys, and then I think, well, it's gonna be a really good conversation for me because I'm going to learn something from you. That's why I do this, because I'm curious
as to what I can learn. So if we're just talking to now our audience, people who are in business, the curiosity factor you're successful, and it's like there's a lot of ladders and snakes to get there. You're up and down, up and down. Eventually you're up there. And that's about consistency and you know, work ethic and all that other stuff. But how important is the curiosity factor and your success? How important has it been?
Critically important? I try to I don't even try. It's just part of how I'm wired.
The thing that I was most curious about when I first started was what's this whole fashion thing about? Like what's the X factor in fashion? And sort of digging into that, I think has then paved my first two and a half years at Orton in a very different way than I would have led otherwise. I mean, I was a commercial beast, like that was what I was trained to do.
Analytical I could tear down the P and L.
I could like diagnose the business and what do we have today and what do we want to be and build the strategy. But if I had just stayed in that place, I would have been a miserable failure. And I probably still think some days that I am a miserable failure, by the way, But being really curious about what what does fashion matter? Like what like is this a frivolous, superficial thing like it's super vain.
It's what is it? You know, what is it?
What is it? And and then you start learning things right that are really critically important, which is actually great brands fashion are not. But great brands create the fabric for culture, like they are deeply important, and fashion is deeply primal, like it's an expression of people's individuality and themselves in a way that has made it a massive industry financially but also has kept it around for something.
So it must be something. There must be something in it because it's still here and it's massive.
Yeah, I mean, look at the richest person in the world that he is in fashion.
So yes, So these are the discovery wor is that without actually being curious from the very first, you know, time I laid foot in the building, I would have just missed and I would have then gone down that path of the classic consultant coming in and you know, thinking about costs and ripping things out and looking at
profit and so on and so forth. But there's a real X factor to be respected and cared for in our business and businesses like ours, which has to do with creativity, which is another whole area of I had never contemplated how important creative forces, sort of that magic fairy dust that you sprinkle throughout the value chain of our business, how important that was, And how to strike a balance between commerciality and creativity, a whole new charac